Abstract
During recent years centrifugal-based microfluidic devices known as Lab-on-a-CD have attracted a lot of attentions. Applications of these CD-based platforms are ubiquitous in numerous biological analyses and chemical syntheses. Mixing of different species in microscale is one of the essential operations in biochemical applications where this seemingly simple task remains a major obstruction. Application of centrifugal force, however, may significantly improve the flow agitation and mixing, especially when it is combined with the Coriolis force which acts perpendicular to centrifugal force. In this study, mixing process in minichambers located on a rotating platform under a periodic acceleration and deceleration angular velocity profile is investigated both numerically and experimentally. We have incorporated various arrangements of obstacles and baffles, which are usually used in stationary mixers, within a batch-mode rotating mixing chamber. Subsequently, the effect of these obstacles on flow field and mixing process has been studied, and among these arrangements four cases have been selected for further experimental analysis. Experimental studies have been performed on a multi-layer CD platform fabricated in polycarbonate plates, and subsequently mixing has been investigated in these minichambers. The quantitative mixing data were obtained after a set of image analyses on the captured images of mixing chamber during the process and the results were compared with the simulation. The results indicate a good resemblance between the two studies both qualitatively and quantitatively. Furthermore, it has been shown that the application of obstacles and baffles together in chamber results in reducing the mixing time more than 50 % as compared to a chamber without any obstacle and/or baffle configuration. Obtaining mixing times less than 10 s in both studies, makes these CD-based platforms an appropriate device for many applications in which a cost-effective device as well as low mixing time is required.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bhagat AAS, Papautsky I (2008) Enhancing particle dispersion in a passive planar micromixer using rectangular obstacles. J Micromech Microeng 18:085005. doi:10.1088/0960-1317/18/8/085005
Branebjerg J, Gravesen P, Krog JP, Nielsen CR (1996) Fast mixing by lamination. Proc Ninth Int Workshop Micro Electromech Syst. doi:10.1109/MEMSYS.1996.494022
Chen JJ, Shie YS (2012) Interfacial configurations and mixing performances of fluids in staggered curved-channel micromixers. Microsyst Technol 18(11):1823–1833. doi:10.1007/s00542-012-1489-x
Chen JJ, Chen CH, Shie SR (2011) Optimal designs of staggered dean vortex micromixers. Int J Mol Sci 12:3500–3524. doi:10.3390/ijms12063500
Chen X, Li T, Hu Z (2016) A novel research on serpentine microchannels of passive micromixers. Microsyst Technol, (Lin 2015). doi:10.1007/s00542-016-3060-7
Ducrée J, Haeberle S, Brenner T, Glatzel T, Zengerle R (2006) Patterning of flow and mixing in rotating radial microchannels. Microfluid Nanofluid 2:97–105. doi:10.1007/s10404-005-0049-4
Grumann M, Geipel a, Riegger L, Zengerle R, Ducrée J (2005) Batch-mode mixing on centrifugal microfluidic platforms. Lab Chip 5:560–565. doi:10.1039/b418253g
Grumann M, Steigert J, Riegger L, Moser I, Enderle B, Riebeseel K, Ducrée J (2006) Sensitivity enhancement for colorimetric glucose assays on whole blood by on-chip beam-guidance. Biomed Microdevices 8:209–214. doi:10.1007/s10544-006-8172-x
Hasnain S, Kumar A, Ganguly S (2013) Passive mixing of co-flowing slugs in grooved microchannels. Microsyst Technol 19(1):17–24. doi:10.1007/s00542-012-1623-9
Hwang H, Kim Y, Cho J, Lee JY, Choi MS, Cho YK (2013) Lab-on-a-disc for simultaneous determination of nutrients in water. Anal Chem 85(5):2954–2960. doi:10.1021/ac3036734
Kim D, Lee S, Kwon T, Lee S (2002) Barrier embedded chaotic micromixer. In: Baba Y, Shoji S, van den Berg A (eds.), Micro total analysis systems 2002 SE-52 (pp. 757–759). Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-0504-3_52
Kong MCR, Salin ED (2012) Micromixing by pneumatic agitation on continually rotating centrifugal microfluidic platforms. Microfluid Nanofluid 13:519–525. doi:10.1007/s10404-012-0983-x
Kuo JN, Chen XF (2015a) Decanting and mixing of supernatant human blood plasma on centrifugal microfluidic platform. Microsyst Technol 22(4):861–869. doi:10.1007/s00542-015-2458-y
Kuo JN, Chen XF (2015b) Plasma separation and preparation on centrifugal microfluidic disk for blood assays. Microsyst Technol 21(11):2485–2494. doi:10.1007/s00542-015-2408-8
Liu RH, Stremler M, Sharp KV, Olsen M, Santiago JG, Adrian RJ, Beebe DJ (2000) Passive mixing in a three-dimensional serpentine microchannel. J Microelectromech Syst 9(2):190–197. doi:10.1109/84.846699
Madou MJ, Kellogg GJ (1998) The LabCDTM : a centrifuge-based microfluidic platform for diagnostics diagnostics been point of. Proc. SPIE 3259, Syst Technol Clin Diagn Drug Discovery 80:80–93. doi:10.1117/12.307314
Madou M, Zoval J, Jia G, Kido H, Kim J, Kim N (2006) Lab on a CD. Annu Rev Biomed Eng 8:601–628. doi:10.1146/annurev.bioeng.8.061505.095758
Nguyen N-T, Wu Z (2005) Micromixers a review. J Micromech Microeng 15(2):R1
Noroozi Z, Kido H, Micic M, Pan H, Bartolome C, Princevac M, Madou M (2009) Reciprocating flow-based centrifugal microfluidics mixer. Rev Sci Instrum 80:1–8. doi:10.1063/1.3169508
Riegger L, Grumann M, Steigert J, Lutz S, Steinert CP, Mueller C, Ducrée J (2007) Single-step centrifugal hematocrit determination on a 10-$ processing device. Biomed Microdevices 9:795–799. doi:10.1007/s10544-007-9091-1
Sahu PK, Golia A, Sen AK (2012) Analytical, numerical and experimental investigations of mixing fluids in microchannel. Microsyst Technol. doi:10.1007/s00542-012-1511-3
Sahu PK, Golia A, Sen AK (2013a) Investigations into mixing of fluids in microchannels with lateral obstructions. Microsyst Technol 19:493–501. doi:10.1007/s00542-012-1617-7
Sahu PK, Golia A, Sen AK (2013b) Investigations into mixing of fluids in microchannels with lateral obstructions. Microsyst Technol. doi:10.1007/s00542-012-1617-7
Steigert J, Grumann M, Brenner T, Riegger L, Harter J, Zengerle R, Ducrée J (2006) Fully integrated whole blood testing by real-time absorption measurement on a centrifugal platform. Lab Chip 6:1040–1044. doi:10.1039/b607051p
Stroock AD, Dertinger SKW, Ajdari A, Mezic I, Stone HA, Whitesides GM (2002) Chaotic mixer for microchannels. Science (New York, N.Y.) 295(2002):647–651. doi:10.1126/science.1066238
Tsai RT, Wu CY (2012) Multidirectional vortices mixing in three-stream micromixers with two inlets. Microsyst Technol 18(6):779–786. doi:10.1007/s00542-012-1516-y
Wang CT, Hu YC (2010) Mixing of liquids using obstacles in Y-type microchannels. Tamkang J Sci Eng 13(4):385–394
Wang H, Iovenitti P, Harvey E, Masood S (2002) Optimizing layout of obstacles for enhanced mixing in microchannels. Smart Mat Struct 11(5):662. Retrieved from http://stacks.iop.org/0964-1726/11/i=5/a=306
Xi Y, Templeton EJ, Salin ED (2010) Rapid simultaneous determination of nitrate and nitrite on a centrifugal microfluidic device. Talanta 82(4):1612–1615. doi:10.1016/j.talanta.2010.07.038
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mortazavi, S.M.A., Tirandazi, P., Normandie, M. et al. Efficient batch-mode mixing and flow patterns in a microfluidic centrifugal platform: a numerical and experimental study. Microsyst Technol 23, 2767–2779 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-016-3109-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-016-3109-7